The Shepherds of Language: The Philological Roots of the Ents by Abe West

The Shepherds of Language: The Philological Roots of the Ents

Tolkien often insisted that the ents were not of his own invention but had rather slipped into the story and found their natural place therein without the design or knowledge of the writer, as he pointed out in a note during his letter to W.H. Auden: “with an effect … almost like reading someone else’s work” (Letters pg 212). Of course, how much of that is correct is up for debate but there is an important truth in Tolkien’s description of the ent’s conception. I use that term here as a reference more to the birth of the ents from Tolkien’s subconsciousness and sources rather thN in the sense that he actively invented them. Tolkien’s deep love and passion for his work Philology is the chief of these sources and it has left its mark throughout every aspect of the ents.

Philology for Tolkien is full of the growth and change of Language, which is not a tame thing. It is very powerful, very big, and in some ways very dangerous, but it is also a living growing thing: not stagnant in place or even bound to a small life-span as we humans are,  but instead continuously growing and evolving as the centuries pass. Tolkien often expressed regret that the current fields of Literary study so often treated language and Philology as means to an end, lesser tools for greater masters and arts, but for Tolkien the very words themselves contained their own beauty. This was specifically true of Welsh for him. He loved the cadence and sound of that language and often lamented its slow demise at the hands of the more prevalent English tongue. In fact, his love of Welsh and other languages, such as Finnish led early on to Tolkien’s first stories.

            
The ents represent the true core of Tolkien’s legendarium they are in a way the truest expression of the task which he set out to do far back in the haze of 1914 on the eve of the War. Tolkien’s entire legendarium grew out of a desire to invent his own language. However, because of his Philological nature, Tolkien rejected the standard course that would have led to an Esperanto type language because it would not be alive. “A living language depends equally on the ‘legends’ which it conveys by tradition” (letters pg 231). Tolkien of course set out to create that legend bringing the life that he so believed gave language its true power. The inventing gradually became more and more natural and just like any healthy language, seemed to Tolkien to take on a life of its own, reaching such a point that by the time he was writing the Lord of the Rings the ents just entered the story naturally: “I came at last to the point, and wrote the Treebeard chapter without any recollection of any previous thought: just as it now is” (Letters pg 231). Tolkien wrote that he seemed to be waiting to find out what happened instead of deciding it, that somehow the story was almost writing itself. In a way the ents mirror Tolkien in this, they also seem to be very keen on a life philosophy where they wait for things to happen, not in a passive way as the movies mistakenly suggest, but in a calm measured understanding of timing and proper action, in a sense the opposite of haste. An Ent treasures the act of speaking as much as the thought that it conveys. As Treebeard says “It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a very long time to say “ (Lord of the Rings Book III Ch. IV).  They love to speak, to revel in their songs and poetry, and to describe perfectly and wholly everything they discuss.

               

Contrast this type of speech with the Hobbits who are quick to give their names and discuss their language with any who will listen. For them speech is merely a tool, a means to an end. They do not stop to think about how and why they speak just what they speak about. Treebeard is very startled by this genuine lack of care in their speech, cautioning them about their openness with their true names and their fast-paced introductions. The ent is a much more measured creature, but not in any way a complacent one.

The paradox of the ents is extremely important to understanding their true nature. Tolkien said they were formed from Philology, Literature, and Life and the result is that they seem to have two contrasting natures that mimic their linguistic roots. The name of these tree-shepherds is of course a part of this. It comes from the Anglo- Saxon and emphasizes their connection to stone, a rather surprising revelation due to their Tree-like appearance but there is a deeper reason for the title. Ents are a mix of wild, frightening strength, power, and free growth but they are also measured orderly and extremely civilized for a race of Tree-like, wild-loving beings. They have both the strength and ethos of stone but also the life and wisdom of trees. Remember that Tolkien describes Treebeard as Troll-like when he first introduces him, and there is some notion that the trolls with their tony ways are a mockery of the ents, but only of one half of them. 

It is interesting that ents share so much in common with giants and trolls and in fact, Treebeard was in some early draft a giant, seeing as these great oafs of legend come primarily from the Welsh Tradition, a language we discussed earlier was one of Tolkien’s favorite and a great inspiration on his own languages. However, it is important to note that ents have a power over stone which goes back to their nature as a sub-creation of Yavanna in response to the adoption of the Dwarves ( For more on their natural enmity see Letter 247). They are more than just stone because they are fully alive, but they can destroy the seemingly indestructible and they are imbued with great power to do so similar to the quiet but surprisingly great power of language itself.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on the entwives and the two contrasts they provide for Philology if we accept that as somehow inextricably tied to the nature of the ents. First of all, there seems to be a deep reflection on the difference between the attitudes of the two towards wild things. Tolkien sees some irreconciled divide that would keep them apart “the difference between unpossessive love and gardening” (Letters pg. 212). Tolkien seemed to feel a deep divide in the psyches of the two genders and that somehow the two were opposed, though they should not have been. There is a deep sadness in their estrangement that is poignant provides yet another example for Tolkien of the unnatural divides that grow up between differing natures, reflected in the famous passage about the power of the enemy being best seen in the division of those who oppose him. Perhaps the ent-wives would not have been destroyed had they not been divorced from the ents and that Sauron purposely struck a cruel blow to both when he conquered one and doomed the other to slow fading.

The other conflict the ents and entwives express is the negative side or gardening, not the nurturing and sub-creating that Niggle or Samwise or Galadriel undertake but the restriction and formulation of Language that produced Philology’s rival field: Lit. Tolkien was  of the mind that “books about Books” (Shippey pg 7) the constant defining and framing of language and the thought on language were a completely different type of stud from his own, represented for him by the A (oak) and B(beech) track rather than the lit. and lang. way of describing them. Tolkien often felt that Philology had somehow been dismissed and belittled by its more “sophisticated” counterpart. The true purpose of Philology was the wholistic study of language the why, who, where when what and how of the thing and was deeply concerned with its natural growth and interwovenness with history and culture but also a deep appreciation of its own stand-alone beauty. The ents are a perfect picture of this, treasuring and growing their language just as they shepherded and cared for the trees, not in a possessive, controlling way but in a very natural way. Literature is the natural enemy of free growth f language as it turns every part into a thing to be dissected, sucked dry of meaning and used to further some greater purpose, philosophy for example. Tolkien made his life’s work the study of the beauty of language and so the ents naturally represent that.